


Runner

by spoky



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Horror, Lesbian AU, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 18:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11856957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoky/pseuds/spoky
Summary: DISCLAIMER: This story is RPF, meaning that I use the star image of real people to tell a completely fictional story. It's not meant to offend or insult anyone. Please do not share my fiction with the people I write about on social media or otherwise. Thank you. (For full disclaimer, please see my profile.)The story contains Sashea romance, Trixya angst and a something-like-a-zombie Aja. Happy Birthday, Dandee.





	Runner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dandee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandee/gifts).



 

The air in the dark staircase is stale and as Sasha gasps for breath; she has to stop running to cough out dust. Her mouth is dry, her lungs are wheezing and she leans to the wooden rail for support as the violent hacking shakes her body. The only source of light, the glow stick she’s holding, slips through her fingers and rolls down the stairs to the previous landing. Through the sounds of her erratic breathing and her racing heart, she can hear the echo of someone running after her, just a couple of floors below. She has two more stories to go. Forty-eight steps. She reaches for another glow stick from the side pocket of her backpack, cracks it for light, grabs the rail firmly and yanks her body forward. She has to make it. She has to.

Out of breath, pressing on the lower edge of her rib cage to ease a side stitch, Sasha reaches the fifteenth floor and sprints to the room at the end of the corridor. She makes it through the door that is purposefully left ajar and grabs the rope Shea has installed for emergencies. She holds it tightly in her grip, ready to pull, praying silently that the erratic steps she can hear approaching are Shea’s. She knows that they’re not, but that doesn’t stop her from hoping. The low but rapid palpitation of her heart pounds in her ears as she stares at the top of the staircase and as she finally sees Aja reaching the top, she wants to scream in frustration. Instead she yanks the rope forcefully but the door doesn’t slam shut, not the way it’s supposed to.

 _Shit_.

She wrenches the rope frantically and this time the door moves, but it still doesn’t shut fully.

 _Shit, shit, shit, shit_.

Aja is getting closer, roaring maniacally, her red eyes fixated on Sasha. Her arms are flinging about uncontrollably as she runs along the hallway and smacks her jaw.

Sasha can’t smell her yet. Aja is not close enough. But she can imagine the stench, the rotten human flesh between Aja’s teeth and underneath her fingernails. Aja is surprisingly clean for a runner, there’s hardly any blood on her, but Sasha is certain that she smells. They all do.

Sasha can remember the time they used to have drinks at the bar downstairs. Gin, mainly. Sometimes rum. Aja would brag that no crawlie would get her, that crawlies were too slow and too dumb. “Old age! That’s what’ll kill me, old age!” she’d say and laugh loudly. Aja had always taken unnecessary risks with the crawlies and now, as foreseen by most, she was running. In a couple of weeks she’d start crawling and a few months after that she’d stop and just lay there, rotting, until Chi Chi or Katya would clean up the body. The thought makes Sasha shiver in disgust and anger.

 _Reckless idiot_.

Right now, though, Aja is running and Sasha needs to move. With one leap she reaches the thick, steel door and starts to push.

_“It’s perfect. There could be a herd of runners and we’d be fine.”_

Shea had insisted they use the office because of the lock and the metal. Now, Sasha is not so sure. What use is a security door if you cannot close it? Her wet sneakers are slippery against the stone floor as she struggles to make the door budge.

Aja crashes against the steel on the other side and for the first time ever Sasha feels grateful that Shea has tortured her with the early morning push-up routines.

_“Ten more, babe. Come on.”_

The thought of Shea sparks anger inside Sasha and with a roar she pushes the door shut, accidentally trapping Aja’s fingers between the hinge. Aja shrieks loudly, but Sasha doesn’t know whether it’s because of a denied meal, or of pain as the tips of Aja’s fingers are cut off by the sharp edges of the steel door. Sasha doesn’t know whether runners feel pain. She doesn’t know if they feel anything at all.

The first inch of Aja’s index finger rolls on the floor and bumps against Sasha’s left foot, smearing blood on her shoe laces.

_Ugh._

Sasha closes her eyes and sighs heavily. She has to consciously remind herself that this is not Aja’s blood on her shoes. It’s crawlie blood, not Aja’s. They’re crawlie fingers on the floor, not Aja’s. Creepy running crawlies. Sasha hates crawlie blood on her things. She’ll have to wash the shoes _– again._

_Fucking Aja._

Sasha reaches for the security lock on her left and snaps it closed, sealing the door completely. No one will get through and into the room before she decides to open it again. Not Aja. Not a runner nor a crawlie. Not another human being, even. Not Shea.

She glances down at her dirty sneakers and then at the fingers next to them. Shea would probably joke about eating them.

_“Technically, it’s not cannibalism. It’s crawlie and not human flesh.”_

The thought makes Sasha laugh hysterically. She’s not going to eat Aja’s fingers! Nor any other crawlie parts for that matter, familiar or unfamiliar. Not even if she has to eat just canned beans for yet another five days. Besides, Acid and Bob should be back soon with some rabbit and rats. Sasha will wait.

She gets up from the floor, picks up Aja’s fingers and walks to the window. She pushes aside the small teddy bear that’s sitting on the window sill and opens the ventilation window to throw out the crawlie pieces. She follows their fall and imagines them crashing against the dark asphalt underneath because her eyesight is not good enough to actually see it. The street is surprisingly quiet and Sasha pauses to enjoy the out of place normalcy of the view. The sun has yet to fully set and the final rays paint long shadows of broken cars and unkempt trees to the ground. The air is fresh after the rain.

 _“Petrichor.”_  
_“Huh?”_  
 _“The smell of rain. It’s petrichor.”_

Sasha knows a lot of useless words like that and absolutely loves the way Shea looks at her whenever she brings up one of them.

With a heavy sigh Sasha turns her gaze to the Mattel window across the street. It’s the fifth window left from the worn out Starbucks sign, seventh floor. There are two pillar candles lit to the otherwise dark window, Chi Chi’s and Peppermint’s, meaning that they’re both safe and sound. Sasha knows she should feel grateful, but as she moves to light her own candle she feels mainly indifferent, maybe slightly resentful as she looks down at Shea’s unlit tealight. She likes to think that Peppermint would forgive her if she knew.

Trying to shed the feelings of resentment Sasha closes her eyes and wonders why they still refer to the spot as the Mattel window, especially as Trixie has been crawling for weeks. Katya still visits her.

_“She should just kill and bury her. Move on.”_

In principle Sasha agrees with Bob. She’s seen the look in Katya’s eyes as she approaches the crawlie dressed in bright pink, the haunted desperate hope as Katya reaches to pet the crawlie’s blonde curls and tells her that she loves her. It’s simultaneously disturbing and sweet. It makes Sasha sick to her stomach, but she gets it. She couldn’t kill Shea either. Despite that Shea insists on it. She’s made Sasha swear she’ll do it.

_“Just jam my brain in. You know how.”_

Sasha does know how. Shea has shown her; taught her. Thanks to Shea herself, she wouldn’t be the first familiar dying at Sasha’s hands. No, Alaska had been given the honor of being Sasha’s first.

_“She’d want it to be you or Katya, but Katya doesn’t need the practice. You do.”_

Staring down at Alaska in anger, Sasha had grabbed Shea’s baseball bat and scowled.

Alaska had always been skinny but as a crawlie she’d been skeletal. Her long nailless fingers had scratched the ground, trying to reach for Sasha as she approached. The yellowish white bone of her ribcage had been showing as someone, or something, had eaten the flesh above. There had been no signs of humanity as she’d lifted her eyes to meet Sasha’s uncertain gaze.

Closing her eyes, Sasha had lifted Shea’s baseball bat and smashed it through the back of Alaska’s skull with one swift movement, exactly the way Shea had instructed her to. Sasha could still remember the cracking sound and the surprising ease in which the bat had broken through the bone and tissue. Afterwards Shea had wiped the murder weapon clean with an old  _New York Times_.

Sasha had initially hated Shea for forcing her hand, but now she understands why. She can see the reason in Katya who refuses to kill Trixie despite that it is the right thing to do.

_“Let her be. I mean it.”_

If Katya had killed Alaska, instead of mere unfamiliars, maybe Trixie would no longer crawl on Lexington Avenue. But she does, and it’s fucked up.

Sasha reaches for a hand mirror from the coffee table and pushes it through the ventilation window. She aims it to reflect the tall Ronald McDonald statue around the corner and looks for the window where Katya keeps her candle. Like Peppermint’s and Chichi’s, it’s also lit. Katya refuses to stay at Trixie’s old place, even if the flat is probably the safest place on Manhattan. “I can’t breathe there,” she says and stays out.

_“She’s going to get herself eaten, acting crazy like that. Fucking lunatic.”_

Aja’s words had made Sasha roll her eyes at the time. Pot, kettle, black. She hadn’t said anything, though. Ironically, it was now Aja who was running while Katya’s candle lights the old fast food restaurant. Katya is crazy. Sasha acknowledges that. But she’s the cockroach type of crazy and will outlive them all, Sasha is certain of it.

She sets the mirror back on the coffee table and eyes around in the space she has started calling home. They’d stripped the Deutsche Bank back office from useless dollars, worthless commercial papers and most of the office clutter. With Bob’s reluctant help – “Privacy, my ass. Trixie’s is safe and big enough.” – they’d brought in a bed and an arm chair from the apartments below. In the corner, right next to the window, Shea had placed a tall turquoise vase she’d found in the lobby.

_“It’ll make it feel like home, you know? Our home.”_

Sasha can see Shea’s touches everywhere. In the green carpet stolen from Macy’s and in the bookshelf filled with ornaments instead of books. Shea’s presence is especially clear in the wardrobe where her bright colored clothes hang next to Sasha’s collection of black, black and black. The space seems to scream Shea’s absence, highlighting every detail, and it’s hard to breathe. Sasha figures she’s experiencing a similar Shea-interspersed emptiness Katya feels at Trixie’s. The thought makes her slightly nauseous and she immediately regrets entertaining the possibility that Shea might not come back. The familiar walls of Deutsche Bank seem to close in, the bed sheets suddenly reek of death and the maneki-neko figurine on top of the bookshelf laughs in epicaricacy. Sasha grabs it and throws it against the wall, shattering the ceramic into teeny tiny pieces.

_Shit. Shit, shit, shit!_

If Shea doesn’t come back, Sasha won’t stay in Deutsche Bank. There’s no way. Maybe she’ll move to McDonalds with Katya, now that there’s no Aja making smartass comments about it. With Katya, Sasha can argue about the meaning of meliorism and visit the graves of their respective ex-lovers. They can stroll around the quiet streets of New York and talk about Trixie’s love for pink plastic or Shea’s fascination with 1980s fashion magazines. With Katya, Sasha will feel safe, as safe as with Shea, and probably with time she’ll fall for the crazy-lady – because Sasha is not made for being alone.

_“Serial monogamy, that’s like your thing.”_

Shea’s accusation was made with humor. That doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Sasha shakes her head in frustration. She doesn’t want to fall for Katya, so Shea has to come back. She refuses to think about the large herd of runners they’d stumbled upon in Central Park. She blocks away the memories of Shea’s screams and orders. She doesn’t think about the fact that Shea is faster than her, a lot faster, and therefore often stays behind to deal with the runners, giving Sasha a head start.

_“Sasha, right! RIGHT!”_

Sasha refuses to acknowledge that the shortest route from Central Park to Deutsche Bank is to run right and down the 5th Avenue, all the way down to E 51st Street – or that the easiest way to distract and confuse runners is to split up. Sasha hates splitting up.

_“Babe, you’re slower than Trixie, your opinion doesn’t count.”_

It was rare to see herds anymore. The first few months there had been runners everywhere, spreading the virus quicker than malaria, quicker than any influenza. In four days, a million bodies and three million runners in New York city alone. Back then there had been only runners and soon enough nothing for them to eat, so they’d started to slow down, eventually collapsing to the ground and starting to crawl before dying of malnutrition. Creepy fucking crawlies. Occasional runners were the norm nowadays, not flocks, and Sasha has no idea where the herd in Central Park had come from.

Aja banging against the door stirs Sasha away from her thoughts. She hasn’t given up on her meal and Sasha sighs. Runners tend to wander away when they cannot smell food, but Aja’s hand is trapped between the hinge. Sasha realizes she’ll need a plan for how to kill her before she can open the door. She glances at the radio on the other side of the room and wishes she knew how to use it. Aja, trapped in place, must be an easy kill for someone coming from the outside. But Sasha doesn’t know anything about radios. It had been Aja’s job to figure them out. Sasha’s job is to learn the drugs in the downstairs pharmacy.

_“Come on, babe, you’re the only one here who can pronounce this shit.”_

It wasn’t because Sasha knew anything about drugs or nursing. It was because she had Masters degree in Latin and Linguistics, meaning that she could enunciate difficult letter combinations such as dihydrocodeinone or phenazopyridine. She didn’t mind, though. It was better than hunting, and definitely better than cleaning. Not that Shea would’ve let her clean. No, that was Chi Chi’s and Katya’s job, to keep Turtle Bay as crawler free as possible. Shea used to tag along with them but after Trixie, she’d moved to collecting with Peppermint and Bob. Sasha had been secretly grateful.

Aja cries loudly, and Sasha squeezes her eyes shut, covering her ears to block out the noise. She knows she needs a plan, to eat something and clean her clothes, but Aja’s screeching is distracting her. Sasha’s brain is a useless bundle, her thoughts bouncing between important and unimportant things. It always happens when she’s stressed.

_“Don’t panic, babe, it’s fine.”_

Ever since their first meeting, Shea has known how to calm her.

Sasha had been standing next to a stage, scared of the spotlight, fondling her necklace nervously, when Shea had appeared from seemingly nowhere, crossed her arms across her chest and grinned. “They say you should imagine the audience naked, but honestly, there are so many dicks in there that I’d rather not.” The comment had made Sasha laugh and relax, allowing her to deliver the best slam poetry performance of the night. Afterwards she’d asked the bartender who the girl in bright purple jumper was. “Shea Couleé. She’s trouble – if you know what I mean.” Of course, Sasha had been immediately intrigued.

_“Oh, c’mon! You just wanted to fuck a black girl.”_

The race thing had been exotic, Sasha wasn’t going to pretend otherwise, but there had been more to it. She can still remember their first date like yesterday, mainly because of how uncomfortable Shea had been the entire time. “Not really my scene, you know,” she’d said, eyeing around in the edgy café over the rim of her Irish Coffee; a drink Shea still considered a waste of perfectly good whisky. With the exact same ease Sasha can recall the first time they’d spent a night together; how nervous she’d been, fondling unskillfully Shea’s wet kitty lips.

_“Try this, babe. Yeah, like that.”_

Sasha takes off her shoes and examines the red stains on them in disgust. She decides she wants a new pair and is about to thrown them outside the window when a loud bang from the hallway gives her a fright. Aja’s agonizing scream sends chills down Sasha’s spine and she holds her breath, eyes wide, all senses heightened. There’s another bang and Sasha’s heart is hammering franticly. She tries to keep her breathing calm while listening closely. Finally she recognizes a familiar three-time-knock and sighs in relief. Shea.

With a couple of quick strides Sasha makes it to the door and opens the lock. Slowly, she pulls the door slightly ajar and sees Shea in the hallway. She’s breathing heavily, the familiar baseball bat resting on her shoulder. Aja is lying at her feet, silent and still.

Sasha closes her eyes and reminds herself that the body is not Aja, not really. She takes a deep breath and pulls the door properly open as Shea turns to look at her. She has blood and dirt all over her, on the yellow t-shirt and on her denim shorts. She has it on her hair and on her forehead, just above her left eyebrow. Her baseball bat is similarly covered in the slimy red liquid and Sasha can’t recall a time she felt equally happy. Her heart is pounding excitedly and the only thing she wants to do is to squeeze Shea’s filthy body against her – but she resists.

Shea smirks, as if reading her thoughts.

“You smell disgusting,” Sasha sneers, swallowing down the happy laughter bubbling in her chest.

“Yeah,” Shea says with a grin. “Missed my appointment at the Mandarin Spa.”

“Oh yeah?” Sasha asks scoldingly, cocking her left eyebrow, and a smile escapes to her lips despite her efforts to stay stern.

“Yeah,” Shea nods and drops the baseball bat with a clang that echoes in the hallway as she steps up to Sasha. “I’m sorry,” she whispers and lowers her head to drop a gentle kiss onto Sasha’s lips.

“Mm,” Sasha acknowledges the apology and wraps her arms around Shea’s neck, rising to her toes. Shea’s figure is firm and familiar against hers as she deepens the kiss, pulling Shea closer. “Don’t ever,” Sasha mumbles between the kisses, “-ever again,” she repeats as Shea grabs her ass and squeezes. “Just leave me-” Sasha whispers as Shea traps her lower lip into a gentle bite, “-like that.”

“I won’t,” Shea lies, they both know it, and presses her nose against Sasha’s cheek. “I won’t,” she repeats quietly, and Sasha takes a deep breath, inhaling Shea’s scent before pulling her over the threshold to Deutsche Bank, back to safety.

* *

It’s some moments later, after some cleaning up and after lighting the tealight on the window sill, that Shea pushes Sasha onto the bed.  _Their_  bed.

The sheets are soft against Sasha’s back and the ceiling is high above her. The room smells like the New York Ritz-Carlton – or what she imagines the Ritz smelled like years ago, rich but comfortable. She closes her eyes and feels the fabric under her shoulders, under her heels and toes as she presses them harder against the mattress and thrusts her hips up involuntarily. She brings her hand in between her legs and fondles Shea’s shaggy coils as Shea traces her inner thigh with hot committed licks. As Shea moves forward, the wet traces cool down, sending small shivers through Sasha’s wrought-up body.

Shea’s light, teasing touches are slow and as she scratches her teeth against Sasha’s skin, Sasha bites down to her lower lip, barely preventing a high-pitched whine. She lowers her hand to scratch Shea’s neck, just underneath her left ear and urges her to move lower.  

“Shea,” she whispers pleadingly, keeping her eyes closed.

“Hmm?” Shea hums and kisses Sasha down there, drawing a soft whimper from her.

“If- If you, oh,” Sasha gasps and spreads her legs wider. She rolls her hips to rub against Shea and opens her mouth to a silent moan.

_Yes. Right there._

Sasha’s brain re-catches her earlier thoughts and squeezing her eyes shut firmer, forcing her body to obey, she picks up on where she left off: “If you die.”

Shea gets up on her knees, pressing open mouthed kisses on Sasha’s stomach and chest as she moves on top of her. “Yeah?” she asks quietly and lifts Sasha’s knee up for a better position, bringing the synthetic cock strapped on her hips against Sasha.

“I… I think I-” Sasha whines and reaches up to pull Shea into a hungry kiss, clinging to her in desperation. “I might,” she sighs against Shea’s lips and then whines quietly, squeezing Shea’s forearm as Shea pushes the dildo inside her with a slow, careful thrust of her hips. “Fall for- oh fuck, fall for Katya,” Sasha pants.

Shea’s bright, bubbly laughter fills the room as she draws back and drops a hasty peck on Sasha’s cheek before fucking into her more forcefully.

“I know, babe. I know.”


End file.
